The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1887-02-16
"You never asked me-where 1 come

And Murdoch understood. There was
a curious twist of perversity in his ma
| ture-or some of his friends so called it.
| Civilized and respectable citizens he
would treat with the sublimest audacity
| OF dlsdain; it was a common saving
| about him that he feared nothing and
respected nobody. But for outcasts and
| disreputable characters of any sort he
had quick, instructive sympathy. 1t
did not take much penetration to guess
the history of the man before him, and
| following the impulse of the moment he
did the very thing to bind that man to
him for life.
"All right, then. Is it a bargain Z?
Shake hands on Itr'
So they shook hands, and Bill Adam
son was installed among the shearers,
and afterward, when that nomad tribe
scattered away east and west, to pas
lures new, he remained ON as one of the
Barangaroo Shepherds queer, silent,
solitary man, who worked for three,
seldom spoke, and never smiled, except
when Murdoch spoke to hisn. He liked
the lonely life at the hut on Stringy
Bark Hill, where few men were willing
to stay; among the other hands on the
station he was moody, sullen, and diff
cult" but the two men who shared the
hut with him found him "well enough
to get on with if you let him alone"
The months went on, one day exactly
like another, till they added up into
years, and it seemed to him that he had
lived there all his life. Murdoch came
up sometimes-he always when he could
went out to the huts himself with the
rations, instead of sending the oyerseer;
or now and then he would pass by casu-
ally when out shooting, and sit over
pipe before Adanson's fire, talking to
him in that frank, trustful, kindly way
of his, which won the hearts of black
and white alike 1t was at such times
as these that he got all Bills history
from him, bit by bit, and deepened into
a dumb, dog like worship the mans first
vague admiration. l do not know
whether Bill Adamson had ever loved
any one or anything in his life before
Il do know that he loved Lennox Muir
doch.
And now Gibson had brought the
news Tat Lennox Murdoch lay dying at
Barangaroo. | cannot try to follow and
analyze the wild, formless thoughts that
worked in that dark brain of his. A
superstitious sailor TO begin with, brood
ing for weeks together over his own
thoughts in the bush, it is in truth
scarcely to be wondered at if his ideas
of the Unseen were not much higher
than those of the bronze colored savages
who would come and eat themselves
stupid on Murdoch's mutton and damper
round their camp fires near his hut. He
believed in the existence of higher
power, whose name he sometimes used
in oaths, and to whom, when more rev.
erently inclined, he vaguely referred
but this rarely happened-as They"
and, in sort of way, in the efficacy of
prayer, though his views on the subject
were peculiar. Only | know that there
articulate shape, the old, old, ever-recur-
ring idea of "a life for life,' and the
demon god whose cruel will can only
be satisfied with blood.
They came in as usual, and settled
down to their supper and their custom
ary monosyllabic talk. Just at last, be-
fore they turned in for the night, one of
them happened to ask him whether he
had seen any one that day. He answer
ed in his slow drawl, as he knocked
the ashes out of his pipe against his
knee
"Gibson from Murray's was here this
afternoon. Came past Barangagoo.
Says the boss is real bad. Got hurt
with tree falling on him."
There was dead silence. Then the
two interchanged comments and ques-
tions in low voice, and finally, after
having tried in vain tC get more lucid
information from him, they turned away
and wrapped themselves in their blank
cts, leaving him still smoking by the
fire. Thereupon he looked up and said:
zone o. you stay here tomorrow
wanter go down and see how he is, to
which they answered "All right" and
were asleep in few minutes.
He sat still, watching the dying en-
bers for some time longer; then he rose
slowly, put in his pocket the fint-and-
steel in tinder-box he always carried,
stuck his knife in his belt, felt for and
found the tin pannikin which served
him for drinking-cup, and opening the
door softly went out.
There was no moon, but it was bright
starlight, and he had lived so many
years in the bush that he knew his way
about it like sleuth-hound. He struck
right into the scrub, pushing and twist
ing his way through it ike black fel-
low then he crossed an open grassy
tract, dotted with gum trees here and
there; then, after a long climb up
steep ouartz-strewn hillside, and an abb
rupt decent into a gully beyond, he
came to spot that perhaps no white
mans foot had ever trodden before. 1t
was level grassy space, with thlckly
wooded slopes rising on three sides Off
ike an amphitheatre. Tall gum trees
grew about it here and there, but not 80
closely as to shut out the starry sky. In
the middle was a grass-grown mound,
where tradition said that native chief
was buried; there was cairn OF stones
piled on the top, and here and there
white objects, that might have been
bones, glinted in the faint light. 1t
was an uncanny place, avoided by the
blacks themselves for the most part,
though they came there to hold nightly
eorroboree now and then. All was per-
fectly still, except for the rushing of
the creek down below, and the low, sol
emn stirring of the wind in the tree
tops. He heaped a pile of dry sticks on
the mound, going to work slowly, meth
odically, in his everyday fashion; set
fire to it with his flint and steel, and
stood watching it patiently till 1T leaped
| into a blaze; then he turned away, and
clearing away the grass and leaves,
drew with his knife circle round the
| grave.
He stripped off his shirt, and laid 1t
aside: then he knelt down in the circle
before the fire, and with his knife and
pannikin beside him, and clasped his
hands before his face, and prayed.
| He had never done such thing In
| his life before-at any rate not since he
was child at his mothers knee. Per
hans the words lie said may shock you
j If written down-so grotesquely bias
| phemous. SO pathetically horrible were
thew. Yet may be there are people
/ whose inarticulate creed, if put into
nlnin English, would not amount TO much
better. :.
Lord Almighty" lie said, 81 don't
know much about this yer business
Pm only a lag, an maybe 'tain't the
thing for me to speak. But if / want te
kill any one. do kill me. Maybe it's al
the same to you-and, you see, nobod,
would miss me. don't know
how to say it all right, but reckon
| you'll know what ] mean. Strike ma
dead now, or at any time you please, an
let him get better. Amen.
sFour corners to my bed,
Four angels round my head,
4 Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that lies onl"
| 1t was the only thing of the sort b.
remembered out of his far-of childhoot
perhaps the only prayer he had eve
learned. It may be that he thought i
of service rs kind of devotional incan